Mind mapping is one of my favourite ways to braindump all my thoughts and ideas that are rolling around upstairs.
In this article, I will explain why I am genuinely obsessed with using mind maps in every area of my life, from goal setting, blog post planning to creating my personal style and meal planning.
What is mind mapping
Mind mapping is an effective visual management tool that helps structure and represent your ideas, plans and concepts. Mind mapping has even been linked to increasing memory.
Mind mapping helps you analyse your best ideas, comprehend new strategies with greater clarity, recall what you already know, learn in a specialised way and help you also generate new strategies, plans and ideas.
Unlike traditional note-taking or a linear text, mind mapping allows information to be structured in a way that closely resembles the brain structure. Mind mapping is both analytical and artistic; it engages your brain in a creative and much richer way, activating all of its cognitive functions.
Over the past 20 years, researchers have brought us incredible insights into the human mind. They have opened our eyes to our limitless capacity to think, comprehend new concepts and store vast amounts of information.
They have found links between our capacity to think effectively and efficiently to our imagination and our ability to create associations between different snippets of information.
A brief history lesson on mind mapping
Over the past 10 years, since Tony Buzan introduced the concept of mind mapping to the world, it has become a mainstream tool used by professionals, academics, students, businesses and individuals to organise, reimage and manage information in a structured way that aids the development of their visual thinking capacity.
It has become a revolutionary visual management tool helping those who use it stay organised, productive and focused.
There is even now an abundance of mind mapping software applications avaliable on all platforms which we will get to later on for my tech babes out there.
The more you know and learn, the easier it is to learn and know more – Tony Buzan
Benefits of using mind maps
I use mind maps in every aspect of my life. If you have a problem, mind map it. Are you planning a party? Mind map it. Are you revamping your personal style? Mind map it! The list of ideas of what you can mind map are endless. Get creative!
I have listed below several benefits of using mind maps for thinking, organising information, and brainstorming ideas that will help you up-level your life.
Mind mapping:
- helps you organise information into easy to remember chunks
- helps improve your memory, retention, and understanding of information
- helps enhance your level of focus and concentration while working or studying
- stimulates the imagination and encourages creative insights and ideas
- makes learning and organising information fun and exciting, as a result, strengthens your interest in the task or challenge
- helps provide you with more clarity about your goals, ideas, and actions.
- helps accelerate your ability to solve problems
- helps reduce mental clutter, cope with information overload, and overwhelm
- helps unlock unexpected creative insights and ideas
- helps trigger creative associations between unrelated bits of information
How can you use mind mapping to up-level your life?
Below is a list of ways you can use mind maps to help you organise, manage, improve and up-level your life.
Mind Mapping for work:
- Sales strategy planning
- Marketing strategy planning
- Content strategy planning
- Quarterly, monthly & weekly planning
- KPI research
- Organising and managing projects
- Organising and managing meetings
- Preparing for networking events
- Business goal setting
- Research and development
- Process and policy planning
- Recruitment
- To-do lists
Mind Mapping for study:
- Learning a new language
- Learning grammar
- Preparing for exams and tests
- Developing a structure for writing essays <– wish I did this!
- Preparing presentations
- Brainstorming ideas
- Solving problems
- Thinking creatively and critically about a topic
- Memorising notes, books, and materials
- For general study and revision of information
Mind Mapping for Life Management
Here are examples of ways people use mind mapping to manage their life:
- Manage their time
- Managing events
- Goal setting
- Quarterly, monthly & weekly planning
- Journalling
- Holiday planning
- Budget and financial planning
- Tracking important dates, events, and information
- Learning a new skill
- Developing a new habit
- Eliminating a limiting belief
- Brainstorming who you want to be
- Figuring out where you want to be and where you are now
- Wheel of life exercise
What you can achieve and the amount of information you can manage using mind maps are incredible. And I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the ways you can use a mind map!
How do I draw a mind map?
Drawing a mind map is a straightforward process; all that is required is an understanding of the basic structure, a few coloured pens and your imagination.
Here is a step-by-step guide on your mind mapping journey:
1. Start with a large sheet of paper and place it horizontally in front of you. I use an A4 and an A3 art book because I love the thicker paper.
2. In the middle of the sheet of paper draw an image that represents the topic you are going to be mapping or draw a circle and write some words inside the circle to represent that image.
3. Draw four branches radiating outwards from the central image. I suggest using a different colour for each branch to make it easier to differentiate the sub-topics.
4. Write keywords as headings along these branches that represent the topic you are mapping.
5. Draw additional branches that extend from your main branches and headings. These words are sub-topics of your headings.
6. Continue to expand the mind map outwards with additional sub-topics/keywords and branches.
Mind mapping rules to improve recall and memory
When creating your mind map, it’s important to use creative tools and methods to help stimulate deeper conscious awareness and to improve your memory and recall of the topic.
Mind mapping rules you should follow are:
- Use keywords and short phrases on lines
- Use proper spacing between topics to separate your ideas
- Use images to represent words and ideas
- Create linear hierarchies of ordered numbers, lists and letters
- Use symbols to classify different types of thoughts and ideas
- Vary word sizes to emphasise the level of importance
- Use UPPER and lower case to emphasise the importance of each word
- Vary branch colours to distinguish different topics
- Vary image colours, emphasis, and size to improve memory and recall
When you create your mind map using these rules, you help stimulate your imagination, form stronger visual associations while enhancing memory and recall of the information you are learning.
Using mind mapping software
There is a variety of mind mapping software applications you can try. As I have not tried them all, I will not review them; I will save that for another post.
Each software application has its advantages and disadvantages, so below, I give a few examples.
Advantages
Benefits and advantages of using software to create your mind maps are you can collapse or expand your map. You can structure it in a way that fits your preference or have a multi-dimensional map. It can also be quick and tidy to put together. Great for presentations or if you want to draw a draft then create a clean copy.
Disadvantages
You might find a computer-generated mind map to feel impersonal and rigid. The software you choose may not have the images you would prefer to use to represent a particular word or idea. Plus most of them are paid memberships so you would only want a mind mapping software if you knew you would use it all the time; for work projects or study.
Mind mapping software applications you might want to try:
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